Measurement of cluster–cluster interaction in liquids by deposition and AFM of silicon clusters onto HOPG surfaces

We have investigated the interaction and aggregation of novel fluorescent silicon nanoclusters in liquids by measuring the size distribution of dried clusters on graphite. The clusters were produced by gas aggregation and co-deposition with a beam of water vapour. Drops of the solutions were placed on freshly cleaved highly oriented pyrolitic graphite, subsequently vacuum dried and investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) in ultra high vacuum. The AFM images show single clusters and agglomerates. The height distributions are Gaussian-shaped with average heights of 1 nm and widths of 1 nm. The heights never exceed 3 nm. In some regions a second cluster layer is observed. In all samples the separation between first and second layers is larger than the separation between the first layer and the graphite substrate, which we attribute to a stronger interaction between clusters and surface than the cluster self-interaction. We conclude that the separation between first and second layer represents a much better fingerprint of the original size distribution of the clusters in solution than the height of the first layer. The observation of a second cluster layer is important for using silicon clusters as building blocks for cluster-assembled materials.